Feds target apps in effort to protect kids' privacy

For all the hay Washington has made about its attempt to keep kids safer online, there’s one place that’s still the Wild West — mobile apps. But the sheriff is cracking down.

App makers, who build the games kids love to play on mobile phones and tablets or devices like the iPod Touch, make it very difficult for parents to protect their kids’ privacy, federal regulators said in a report released Monday.

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The Federal Trade Commission says it’s time for app makers to get in line with big sites like Facebook, which have made some strides to protect children’s identities and whereabouts and educate parents about how data might be shared with advertisers or social media sites.

“While we think most companies have the best intentions when it comes to protecting kids’ privacy, we haven’t seen any progress when it comes to making sure parents have the information they need to make informed choices about apps for their kids,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement. “In fact, our study shows that kids’ apps siphon an alarming amount of information from mobile devices without disclosing this fact to parents.”

Nine months after an FTC survey found little information about privacy policies for kids’ mobile apps, the agency’s follow-up report had a clear message: Nothing has really changed.

Young users and their parents still don’t have important information about privacy practices for the apps — or about how they might share data with advertisers or connect with social media, according to the report. The report said some apps surreptitiously share data like geolocation, device identification numbers and even phone numbers with third parties.

Now, the FTC is launching investigations into whether some mobile app developers have violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act or engaged in deceptive practices that might subject them to an FTC complaint.

Though the agency refused to disclose how many or which apps it is examining, Jessica Rich, associate director of the FTC’s Division of Financial Practices, said the agency is using a range of tools, like Monday’s report, to try to clean up privacy practices in the mobile space.

“Enforcement is a very important tool to show there are consequences when privacy is not being observed,” she told reporters on a conference call, adding that the privacy issue was systemic and widespread.

Last year, the agency extracted $50,000 out of kids’ app maker W3 Apps as part of a settlement over charges the company violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. It also said it would look into the marketing practices for apps that allow users to make in-app purchases over concerns that kids may not fully understand that functionality.